QuakeLive

Given his iconic status paired with monstrous results, Shane has been seeded among 3 more elite players in Group A. Along with Belorussian rocket maestro Cypher, Russian aim monster Evil and fellow American all-rounder DaHang, rapha will be looking to add another title to his already impressive trophy case.

Last year, Shane combined both titles as he won both the Duel and Clan Arena QuakeCon Challenge, thus tying Cypher in QuakeCon trophies (three each) and being the first person in the history of the tournament to win both first places.

To determine the Duel Invitational seeding, the different tiers had to play a round-robin group stage:

Surprisingly, the Russian Evil, who was hailed as one of the main contenders coming into QuakeCon was quickly dispatched by Cypher and DaHang. As we all know, domestic competition is the toughest. Pulling an upset, DaHang snatched the first series 2-1 against Rapha, but our star quickly bounced back by punishing Cypher with a 2-1 series win. In the end, DaHang got the best of everyone and finished at the top.

The Duel Masters invitational

SK's finest started the journey through the bracket with two very convincing victories. Facing Apparition_ in the first round, Shane disposed of the challenger in a dominant fashion to proceed to the quarter-finals. What awaited on the battleground was the seasoned European veteran winz. Despite the numerous games under his belt the Frenchman was no match for Rapha who closed the series with a 3-0 and was preparing to face the legend tox.

This series proved disastrous to the American. Relying on his heavy aim and pressuring style, the Swede snatched game one. The sparks were however there and Shane immediately retaliated and equalized the series. What followed was a mix of mistakes, combined with a hitting toxic - a combination which spelled disaster for SK's player. Unfortunately, Shane fell with a 3-1 scoreline, a situation which most definitely made Cypher, evil and DaHang draw a sigh of relief.

The Belorussian Beast first broke the three-way-tie and made history with 4 QuakeCon titles.

This meant that Rapha was out of the competition which more or less became a playground for his greatest rival - Alexey 'Cypher' Yanushevsky. As expected, the Beast from the East dominated the finals against DaHang and added a historic fourth QuakeCon first place title to his already impressive trophy cabinet.

Rapha, welp and the CTF Open

Despite the setback, Rapha teamed up with cl0ck, id__ and psygib in team welp as to challenge the CTF medals. Known as a well-rounder in almost every game mode, Rapha lead his team to victory until they reached the European force that is Unknown ( winz, gerppa, zyrix and l1nk1n). The unfortunate loss to the Europeans, moved welp to the lower bracket. There, they fought their way back to the Grand Final, but not before taking sweet revenge on Unknown to eliminate them in third place. QuakeCon 2014, however, was just not Rapha's tournament. Welp lost 2 - 1 to 2014 and thus took the Silver medals home.

This concludes the QuakeCon 2014 tournament. Despite this being the third time in which Shane places outside the top 3 in his entire competitive career in a duel tournament, we at SK are extremely proud that he waved our flag high and proud.

My journey into eSports started in 2004 when I accidentally caught a small video on TV from the WarCraft 3 WCG 2004 final. I opened up the SK Gaming website from my father's laptop and never stopped reading to this day. In early 2010 I started writing at a Bulgarian news website simply because I disliked how the current editor was handling his job and with time, I got to be Editor-In-Chief. My main writing interests back then were StarCraft 2, QuakeLive and League of Legends.

Fast-forward to 2012, after a small hiatus and moving to England to attend university, I decided to start writing news posts again, inspired by a couple of industry figures who have taken their turns taking eSports writing to a new level. With the beginning of IPL5, I was given a trial with SK Gaming which was successful and I never looked back.

In early 2014, onGamers presented me with an incredible opportunity to join their ranks which I took. Although I believe my 2014 was rather poor (in terms of work ethic and results), I have made changes during the winter break to ensure that sufficient effort will be made to repair that. Unfortunately, due to the collapse of the team, the project was at a stand still which marked the end of my stint with the oG crew.

I continued producing 1 on 1 interviews with SK members until July 2015. After that, other commitments arose and I figured I could not provide the flow of content I promised my superiors and took a step back, leaving SK.

If you are an eSports fan who is looking to get into writing or simply want to chat about eSports across the years, you can always find me on my twitter - @Adddler . Below you can find some trivia about me.

Pro(s): FORG1VEN, Faker, WeiXiao, NaMei and Mata.
Position: AD Carry
Series: All the World Elite games at IPL5, KT Bullets versus SK Telecom T1 K OGN Summer 2013 Final and LPL Summer Final between StarHorn Royal Club and EDG (The perfect Jinx game by Namei).
League related article: Most of TeamLiquid.net's takes on the 2012 and 2013 OGN tournaments.

Counter-Strike

Pro: f0rest
Team: Fnatic (2008-2009)
Series: AGAiN vs Fnatic at WCG 2009. Literally broke a cup after the game. One of the most emotional series for me as a spectator.